Germany's Dance With the Devil
by AlabamaEsme
Summary: It's 1933, and Germany has just met his new boss: Adolf Hitler.He's forced to trust the man out of need for a leader. What unfolds over the years is something Germany never expected. Will later contain Holocaust scenes and war scenes- this IS WW2 afterall
1. Chapter 1

_Trembling, crawling across my skin  
Feeding your cold, dead eyes  
Stealing this life of mine_

I believe in you  
I can show you that I can see right through  
All your empty lies, I won't last long  
In this world so wrong

Say goodbye,  
As we dance with the devil tonight  
Don't you dare look at him in the eye  
As we dance with the devil tonight….

_**Germany's POV**_

_January 30__th__, 1933_

He was said to be our future hero. He claimed that he would save our country and make us strong again; he claimed that the German race would once again be powerful. The people's desperation for someone to lead them out of the darkness had put this man into power. He was certainly confident in his abilities, and Hindenburg supported him, and so did most of the German people….surely that meant he would be good for us, right?

My heart was racing nervously in my chest as I knocked on the door. This would be the first time I would be near the man and he would find out that a country was not only a piece of land drawn on a map, but also a living being.

"_Kommen in. " _

Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and walked inside the office. The man standing near the window of the office was looking out over the city. He wasn't as tall as me, but he wasn't short either- roughly around 5'8". He was dark haired and had dark eyes with a normal sized build: not broad shouldered, but not a small stick. He reminded me of Prussia in stature- full of self confidence.

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up...something wasn't right about this man. I couldn't tell what it was, but something was clearly wrong with him. His gaze was unsettling and critical, but also pleased, why I did not know, but it seemed to be pleased about something about me.

" Guten Tag" he said, I could detect the Austrian accent in his voice. It was less rough than my own German one. "What can I do for you?" he asked.

I walked into the room and shut the door behind myself. "I wish to speak to you about some things, if you don't mind sir. It is something I'm required to do whenever a new leader comes." I explained.

The man only nodded and motioned for me to continue. I did so, and when I was done telling him what I was and about the others like me, he was silent for an unusual amount of time. Usually the blubbering out of shock happened almost instantly. Instead, this man merely smiled after a few more moments. "And you are the only one representing Deutschland?" he finally asked.

I shook my head, "Not neccisarily. My brothers and I represent the Germanic Nations as a whole: Austria, Prussia, and myself. Some people include Switzerland as a Germanic Nation, but we do not simply because he isn't truly made up of German blood, but more or less of a large mixture of bloods."

"Prussia? I was under the impression that the great Kingdom was all but gone?"

I had to smile at that "I would not tell him that- he would be highly offended at the idea of not excisting. I doubt he even realizes that he is no longer a large nation." I said quietly.

The man nodded a small bit. He seemed to remember the reason as to why we were here though, as he finally introduced himself formally. "My name is Adolf Hitler."

I already knew his name, as I had heard it daily for the past few months almost constantly. I introduced myself as well, "And I am Ludwig." I said.

He smiled "Is there anything you wish to tell me about yourself, Ludwig? Maybe about your own personal upbringing...the type of people you were raised around?" he asked. A dark emotion that I couldn't read flashed through his brown eyes.

I was confused by what he emplied about the type of people I had grown up with. Prussia could have raised me around more competant and reasonable people than Spain and France, yes, but it was being around such strange people that had helped shaped me to become the person I now was. "Prussia, my elder brother, often kept me in the company of his two dear friends- France and Spain. How he managed to befriend them in the first place, I do not know...culturally speaking, we're already very different from them, but the friendship has lasted to this day, despite how different all three of them are." I said. After a few more moments, I added " I was taught to fight, taught to win. Again, my brothers and I are each vastly different from each other, and I share more in common -regarding personalities- with Austria than I do with Prussia. According to Prussia though, I've always acted more like him, even when we first met."

Hitler seemed to be quite happy to hear this "Good. You may go now, Ludwig. I believe you and I will get along just fine." He said.

When I finally got to leave, I left ill at ease and worried about what the future held for myself and the rest of the world.


	2. 2: Remembering Betrayal

_March of 1933_

_A few months after Hitler was elected chancellor_

_Germany's POV_

I slipped out of my room, being quiet so as to not wake the others in the house. Prussia had moved in recently, and he hated my runs that made me get up at four in the morning. He really hated it if I accidently woke him, so for my brothers sake, I was quiet in the morning. I grabbed my boots as I headed to the door and hurriedly laced them, eager to get out and use up some of my energy.

I smiled as I went to the kennels, opening the gate to the one that held one of my favorite dogs. The German Pinscher wasn't the largest dog I owned, but she loved to run with me in the mornings. "Guten morgen." I murmured as I patted the dog's head. Raina was her name, and as always, she was ready to go.

I never leashed her when or any of my other dogs when I ran, as it just wasn't worth it. They always stayed close, and the leash only got in the way. As we took off, she settled herself into her own stride while I settled into mine.

After a mile or two I paused on the top of a small hill to look down at the tired land. I watched as a man who looked to be in his fifties limped to his home. He carried a gun in one hand, but I could tell he didn't like it. He seemed to fear it. The man paused at some far off rumbling in the distance, and I understood why he trembled while he carried his gun, why he limped, why he looked up out of paranoia at the sound of rumbling thunder. World War One.

_The unfamiliar babbling of another language filled Germany's ears. Between shouted orders and curses in German, he heard the further off cries in a softer language- French, and at times, he heard English. At the moment, he was in a trench somewhere in France and was watching as soldiers from his trench shot at the ones laying in the other. The French had been struggling, but at the moment they were being backed by their Allies. Germany wished that for his brother's sake, France would pull out of the war, as he knew Prussia didn't like seeing his beloved friends (Spain and France both) in pain. _

_Germany was trying to ignore the sound of the fighting though, as he was wanted to read the scrap of paper that told of the new and fresh battles between himself and Italy. He hated fighting Italy…Italy was his friend and hadn't wanted to betray him. Italy's people were tired and no longer wished to fight, it wasn't his fault that his boss had decided to join France and the others in an attempt to not be blamed for the war…_

I hated remembering those days. I did my best to forget about my former comrade whenever I could. It was difficult though.

With a sigh, I started on my run again.

It was roughly two hours before I arrived home. I came back to a mildly annoyed Prussia. "What is it now?" I asked with a sigh, unlacing my boots. In the house I didn't wear them, or at least not this pair.

Prussia rolled his eyes, "Austria is getting paranoid…..he still misses his empire. He doesn't like your new leader and keeps going on and on about 'there is a reason I refused him here. Something isn't right about that man'. "He grumbled.

My shoulders rolled in a shrug. I didn't want to think that I might be wrong, so I ignored Austria's concern that Hitler could be a possible danger. So far, things were slowly getting better. Every day I felt stronger. Every day I felt hope that eventually, Deutschland would be a powerful nation once again. "And your friends?" I asked carefully.

"France is still rebuilding. His boss keeps him busy. I haven't seen him in a few months, but the last I saw of him he looked rough. The fighting took its toll on him, with so much of The Great War's eastern front being fought on his land, ya know."

"Spain?"

"He's alright I guess. I haven't been able to get in touch with him either." He paused for a second, apparently mulling over something. "Hey, West?" he started. On the map, he was labeled as 'East Prussia', so in turn, he called me West, as Poland separated us.

"Yes, brother?"

"Have you heard from….Feli recently?"

Old pain shot through me, but I hurriedly did my best to hide it from my face. Judging by Prussia's expression, I failed. "No, Prussia. I haven't heard from him. He's like all the rest of us- he's been busy due to his boss. He's been trying to rebuild." I murmured. "He is still adjusting to his new leader, remember? "

Prussia flinched just enough for me to understand that I had snapped.

Again.

Italy was a person I did my best to forget about. I didn't want to remember a single thing about the nation. I didn't want to remember what he did to me. I didn't want to remember how he turned his back on me, leaving me to fight a war that I had little to do with in the first place, a war that had been caused by my brother, not me. A war I had been blamed for.

"I'll be back later. Don't come looking for me."

"Come on Ludwig…don't be so touchy about it. Ya gotta let him go eventually, ya know?"

"Nein, I don't. Just let me go, Prussia. I'll be back in time for my meeting- I always am." I snapped, retying the boots I had been about to take off.

I felt a strong hand settle itself on my shoulder. "Stay here please. Driving all that way to the Italian border will only make you all the more mad and resentful. "Prussia murmured. "Come on, let's go get a few beers and see if we can Austria drunk- that always ends up being funny."

I felt like I was a child all over again; a little depressed teen boy that needed to be cheered up, and his brother was the one who always seemed to know what to do when something bad happened. Prussia smiled at me- only a small smile- when I looked at him. Again, I felt like a child, but at the moment, I wanted to feel like a child and accept my brother's odd form of comforting.

So I did accept it.


	3. 3: Warning Signs

_Germany's POV_

My boss is one of those people who required perfection. There was no other option but perfection, especially with the training of soldiers. France and the others had specifically said that Germany could no longer have a large military, particularly one of the size that my boss planned on building. France didn't seem to be concerned about what we were doing here and none of the others who had created the Treaty seemed too concerned about it either- they were all busy with the Depression, so they had turned to a blind eye to what Hitler was doing. Hitler said that every nation should have a military, and I agreed with him.

Hitler had been doing quite a lot since he came into power. People were working again instead of begging for food, and there were signs of pride in them. The defeat in World War One and being crushed under a treaty as harsh as the Treaty of Versailles had caused many of us to bow our heads and try to pretend that we were not German. People hated us for what had happened and we had hid from their hateful gazes for years, but we no longer did so now. Soon, we would rise up again and be powerful. We would be Germany again. We would be the people who united everyone who spoke a German dialect; we would be one powerful country under the Third Reich.

Hitler was building a friendship with Russia's Stalin and Italy's Mussolini, and by the way he had been talking when I overheard him one afternoon, he was planning on aiding Francisco Franco in Spain. Europe was about to break into another revolution. I could feel it in my bones; I felt it at the last World Conference. Everyone had been live wires, each of us thinking a different way. With so many conflicting ideas, it was only a matter of time before someone finally decided to make their move and change Europe all over again.

By the way France was acting he was expecting me to be the one to cause the revolution…or war. He had been building a defensive area along the river to protect himself from a future invasion for quite some time now. Why he thought I would attack from such a place, I do not know. Crossing the river, among other things, would be completely pointless. There were better ways to get to his country- Belgium was always easy to march into and through.

Then again, France had never been good with preparing for wars. I was mildly offended that he was expecting me to make the first move. Just because I was brothers with Prussia did not mean that I had a desire for war. I don't hate it, but I don't enjoy it. War is something that is necessary. There will never be permanent peace- it is a theory that is physically impossible. As long as there are different ways of thinking, different opinions in the world, then war would continue. The only way to create eternal peace was to abandon our identities- our races, religion, and our opinions. That was something that we could not do though. Most people take pride in their ancestors, so they refuse to forget where they come from. They also take pride in their beliefs, and they refuse to forget that, and until they do, lasting peace is an impossible fool's dream because of how often race and religion play a part in war.

That was my opinion at least, and my opinion was formed from being in multiple wars, along with watching those that were in my family for getting blamed for wars. And France….I would have my revenge. I would have my revenge on all of the Allies. They had set the Treaty up the way it was on purpose in an attempt for me to be weak for many years, so I couldn't rise again. I could not help but smile as the memory of the others watching me uneasily at the last meeting. They knew I was getting stronger, and they knew that my leader was planning something.

None of them knew what though. That frightened them the most. It also frightened me; you don't build an army as large as Hitler wanted without a goal in mind, and that goal was war.


	4. Hungarian music, German household

_**1938**_

Austria had only lived with us for a few weeks, and I was already wondering if he was purposely trying to be an _arschloch_. He did what he could to avoid me, and he did what he could to avoid Prussia- my home was big, but not that big. When he and Prussia could not avoid each other, the pair nit-picked at each other until one of them left the room.

"Do you have some kind un-awesome nervous twitch or something?" Prussia asked while he sat on the counter drinking his beer. Austria was sitting at the table, crossing and uncrossing his legs, drumming his fingers on the table, and grumbling to himself.

"Is that all you two do? Drink beer?" Austria snapped in defense.

Prussia took a moment to think, "It's what I do. West does his running thing in the mornings, takes care of his dogs, and then locks himself up in his office." He declared after his moment of thinking.

My 'office' was the map room. Each country had one, sometimes more depending on if they were one of the ancients or not. France, England, Spain, and China for example: they each had massive rooms that showcased their histories. The room contained maps starting from when the country came into existence and continued, showing the changing borders of themselves and those around them. In my case, Prussia's maps were shared with mine for a large portion of the room until I became an independent nation. There were also fragments of our past- a gun cabinet filled with muskets to modern guns, Prussia's Teutonic Knight robes displayed behind glass, my first military uniform as a nation, and so on. This was where I did my work. Currently, I had been working with my boss as we prepared to take our next target- Poland. I was positive that we could take him in a short time. Within a handful of weeks the country would be secured and occupied by German troops. My biggest worry was that when I had to bring Poland into my home, he'd try to help me 'redecorate.'

I could feel Austria's glaring eyes as I poured myself a drink in the kitchen. "There is a geige in my office if you wish to play it. I know it isn't the same as your piano, but you are driving all of mad with that drumming of yours."

"Knowing you, it is so out of tune it would be impossible to play." He snapped back. Without his music, Austria had become hard to deal with. His 'nervous twitch' was simply him playing the music in his mind. I remembered now that Hungary had once said she always woke to the sound of music, whether it was piano, violin, or some other instrument. That dull memory had explained why Austria had gotten so snappy and short tempered. Without something to play, he was brimming with unused energy and his own thoughts were making him angry. I often wondered if German was his native tongue…more often than not, it felt like it wasn't, and that his native tongue was instead the language of music. My brother had learned to play by ear long before he ever actually took the time to learn what each key was called. Due to this, he rarely used sheet music because after playing a piece once or twice, it was forever in his memory. He had also composed several pieces, but never wrote them down, so they too were memorized.

"Actually, nein, I played it a few days ago. I would wax the bow though." I replied, not expecting him to answer. Sure enough, he didn't say a word, but the soft click of my uptight brother's shoes told me he had left to play his second favorite instrument. The violin offered an escape from everything.

"Why does he have to be so un-awesome?" Prussia complained.

"He gets bored. He thinks differently than we do. Our strengths are battle strategy and weaponry, his is music. "I murmured.

Prussia sighed, but didn't say a word as slowly but surely, our home was filled by the sound of a bow being brought gently across strings. At first the music was soft as Austria became familiar with the violin I owned, and then it became faster and louder as a song filled my brother's mind, causing him to play it.

"That's not Austrian…"Prussia said slowly, pausing to drink part of his beer. Within the time period of five seconds, half of the glass was empty.

The fast paced, pulsing piece was one that was centuries old. It was beautiful, and carried fierce undertones as it flowed through the house. The music was familiar to me, but as if it was a distant memory...a childhood one, when things had been slightly less stressed. When even my brothers had been young countries…

I smiled, "it's Hungarian."

_**Author's Note: This chapter was meant to show the relationship between the German brothers. They are all very similar, but at the same time, each one is unique. Germany is the analytical, planning one. Prussia takes no crap from anyone and is a true fighter, while Austria is the quiet, thoughtful, one who would rather be alone. I wanted to show how different each of them was from the other…and also throw in some Austria x Hungary fluff because they were an empire for so long that they both influenced each other to a large extent.**_


	5. Book Burning

_Germany's POV_

I was careful about who I looked at and what my face revealed as I wandered through the throng of people gathered around the massive fire. I could feel the light grasp of Italy's hand on the back of my uniform, and I was constantly aware of it. Even if we were allies, Italian soldiers would not be welcome here; especially Italian soldiers that didn't meet a single perfect race idea.

"Ve….Jerrmanee, what is this about?" he asked softly.

I shook my head slightly, "Not here. Just stay close to me." We were looking for Prussia. In theory finding him wouldn't be hard, but you would be surprised how white hair easily looks blonde when it reflects fire. I was relying on my brother's slightly scruffy appearance to help me find him.

I didn't expect to find him at the very front of the whole ordeal. I knew he detested everything about the Nazi Party, which surprised me because of how well things had been going recently.

The fire flickered in his bright red eyes as he stared at it. The dark haired man beside him, even without the glasses, I recognized to be Austria. His gaze was locked on the scene in front of him. I heard Italy whimper a tiny bit and step closer to my side at the sight of the burning books. I knew what the whimper was for- for once he wasn't concerned about his own safety, but about the safety of knowledge. When Italy did not sleep and was not in the kitchen, he was reading or drawing. The sight of a mound of books- of knowledge- burning didn't appeal to him. I knew that Austria felt the same, even if his expression remained blank. He had raised Italy after all, and the pair had more in common than they would ever admit when it came to things such as art and music.

"It's nice of you to join us." Austria murmured as he stood beside me now. Italy was still clinging to my uniform. Austria's gaze never wavered from the fire in front of us, and when the crowd around us cheered, our little group of three- Italy was silent for once- cheered and yelled as well.

I glanced over at Prussia, then back at the fire in front of us once more. "I had some business to attend to." I hissed through my teeth.

"Who is next?"

Austria was many things, but he certainly wasn't as ignorant to the rest of the world as he sometimes pretended to be. He had been paying close attention to world affairs ever since he had become annexed. "Does it matter? We will win."

Italy vehed softly behind me, showing that he didn't like the current conversation that my brother and I were sharing while watching the fire grow larger. I wasn't surprised. Italy hated knowing that I was preparing for war. It wasn't that he didn't like fighting as much as not wanting to see me harmed that was the source of his worries.

"You're making a mistake. Do you wish for death?" Austria growled, "That is all you will earn in the end. The Allies will only do what you ask of them for so long…bringing me into the Third Reich is one thing, but what you are planning…they will never agree to."

Prussia stamped on Austria's foot. When Austria shot him a glare, Prussia merely nodded up towards the podium in front of us. Each of us glanced up, and each of us found a pair of dark brown eyes staring down at us.

I knew we were attracting attention. A few people had already shot us glares and grumbled curses in German, obviously bothered by our lack of attention on the fire that burned in front of us.

Red eyes… Violet eyes… Blue eyes… Brown eyes… We all stared back at the man above us as we raised our right arms, each of us in unison with each other as well as with the people around us. Italy did not raise his arm; he did not salute- he simply stared.

"_Heil Hitler!"_ The words were not foreign to me, nor were they foreign to my brothers. Austria spoke them with hatred hidden just behind the monotone. Prussia yelled with false enthusiasm, and I with the hope that I could create a strong, powerful Deutschland, one that was so strong that not even the Allies could defeat; one that would last a thousand years. Among the masses, our voices blended in.

One leader.

One voice.

One powerful, united German people.

_Say goodbye_

_As we dance with the devil tonight_

_Don't you dare look him in the eye_

_As we dance with the devil tonight…_


End file.
